Franciscan Studies

COMMENTARY RECENT WORKS ON SAINT FRANCIS It has weU been said that no one who has met and loved Saint Francis was ever quite the same again. This accounts, no doubt, for the constant stream in all languages of new books on him, biographies, studies, translations of his own opuscula or of the mediaeval Legends. Not all of these, unfortunately, are free from historical error, and too often the ancient legends and fables are propagated anew. We here propose to examine critically several more recent studies. These include a biography by Abbé Englebert, in its French original and in English translation; a pleasing coUection of magnificent photographs of Franciscan Umbría, a penetrating study of the inner spirit of the Saint, and a new EngUsh translation of the writings and words that he has left us. A new Biography of Saint Francis When the English translation of Abbé Orner Englebert's Saint François d'Assise1 first appeared, it enjoyed considerable sale even in secular bookshops and received some favorable reviews. However, most of these reviews were non-critical and made without any attempt to judge the work against the background of the Sources of Saint Francis, or to coUate the original French and the EngUsh translation. If the work is to be reviewed and judged adequately, however, both approaches are necessary. First, one must review the author's work, his thought, his judgements, preferably in the original French. Secondly, the EngUsh translation, which is too often a travesty of the original, so inaccurate and careless does it appear; and the needless Introduction by the translator, which blatantly contradicts some of the positions adopted by the author. 1 O. Englebert, Vie de S. François d'Assise. (Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1947. Pp. 460; 4 appendices; 16 hors-texte.) English: Saint Francis of Assisi. Translated and edited by Edward Hutton (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1950. Pp. ?—352: three appendices; bibliography; frontispiece and 16 illustrations; index. $ 4.00.) A Spanish version by P.George de Riezu, OFMCap., appeared in Buenos Aires, 1949, and a German translation from PUger-Verlag, Speyer, 1950. 198 Commentary199 I. Vie de S. François Abbé Englebert was already known among writers on things Franciscan for his French editions of the Fioretti and the Sayings of Brother GUes before he pubUshed the Life of Saint Francis.8 Since the present work he has become famUiar to EngUsh readers through his story of The Wisdom of Father Pecquet and his Lives of the Saints. As a priest, scholar, hagiographer and editor, he is in a position to achieve an insight into the true significance of Saint Francis, and to make his study an endeavor to see God's grace at work in and through the PovereUo rather than a mere pursuit of external events — a danger into which more than one historian has fallen. i. The Vie de saint François is not intended by its author to be just another Life of the Seraphic Saint. Admittedly, we have popular biographies in abundance, most of them uncritical attempts to reword secondary sources, too many of them "slanted", perhaps unconsciously, by the very sources their authors use. They fail to take into account more recent historical discoveries and newly found source-material. Abbé Englebert, however, has made a brave attempt to survey critically the mare magnum of the sources; and his excuse for the work, if such is needed, is that he has availed himself of texts discovered in the last fifty years, since Paul Sabatier pubUshed his Vie de saint François in 1894. Most Franciscans wiU agree that Abbé Englebert has succeeded admirably in the resultant portrait of Saint Francis.8 While he has done justice to the human and the poetic in the Troubadour of God, he has rightly subordinated these elements to the divine, to the true stature of sainthood. For aU his admiration for P. Sabatier (whose influence on the Franciscan movement cannot be denied, and whose historical contribution cannot be beüttled), Englebert avoids the extreme positions and prejudices of that scholar, to do greater justice to Hugolino and the Roman Curia, and to grasp more deeply the inner Ufe of...